Jungle Blair & The Boy Who Di Canio-d Cambodia | Pol Pot (Part 1/4)

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0:26Welcome back to Fin vs. History. I'm joined by Horatio Gould. Pot-korn-a-kettle-pol. It's the big one. Lads, chuck your colanders down the stairs. We're going to Indochina. It's Pol Pot fortnight. Ding dong, dank, dank, dank. Fuck me. Here we go. Out of the gate. Colander down the stairs. You haven't seen that video? Charlie, get the video up just to, otherwise I'm back into the corner here. 20 seconds on the clock and you've gone, dank, dank, dank, dank. That's how to name your Asian baby. How to name your Asian baby. King song, ding dong. Great stuff. One of my favorite videos. Wow. Not even...

1:04Normally we bury it a little bit so that people clicking on, you know, they've had a bit of time to acclimatize, but straight out the gate. Lads, get your colanders out, chuck them down the stairs. We're in Indochina. It's a bit of red meat this fortnight. The pigs are eating steak for a fortnight. Yeah. We're in Pol Pot. It's one of the ones I've been most excited about because I don't really know a lot about him. It's crazy. Apart from the fact that he has the same name as the X Factor winner. Yes, it's not Pol Pot. Pol Pot. We should be very clear. This is not the history of Paul Potts. But we will touch on Paul Potts.

1:34He does come into the story. Because they're both alive at the same time. Yes. There's a brief crossover, so we might cut between both their lives. Yes, we should be checking in on what Paul Potts is doing at the same time as Paul Potts. What's Paul Potts doing now? Is he still alive? Has he been tried by the ICC? No, he's 55 years old. He was born in October 1970. So this is around the time the Khmer Rouge... The Khmer Rouge are in the jungle at this point, fighting. We will be checking in on what Pol Pot is doing. Do you know what? Because Pol Pot's not his actual name. Yeah. And he takes the name Pol Pot, I believe, 1970, as Pol Pot is born.

2:09Right. That is weird, isn't it? Yeah. Something's going on and we will get to the bottom of it. We will get to the bottom of it. But today we're not really touching much on Pol Pot. Well, what's fascinating about Pol Pot is that he's a dictator, but he's not even really the main character in his story. No. He's quite an enigmatic figure. We don't know a lot about him. It's two years after he's been in power that he tells the country that he's in power. Yeah. So no one actually knows what he's doing. And if, you know, we go Gaddafi, you go Saddam, you go Idi Amin, there's a huge amount of ego and sense, but he wasn't really like that.

2:42No. It wasn't like - He's in the shadows. There's not like, you know, even like Mao, you have huge pictures of Mao. Yeah. There wasn't a cult of personality. No, it's the opposite. It was a cult of killing nearly everyone in your country. I don't know what that is. Cult of zero personality. so we need to start with uh really uh indochina yeah which is one of i love indochina because it sounds like i named it yeah it's cambodia vietnam but it's got three different countries that are neither vietnam or it's india there's india there's china there's india china whatever that is brazil germany spain but it's sweden yeah that's kind of the love it uh and we are Indochina obviously now is a haven for sex tourists.

3:23And Indochina, you know, what Switzerland is to financial crime, Indochina is to non-consensual sex. If it didn't exist, we'd have to invent it. But would we say, seeing how Indochina was in the 70s, the fact that it's a haven for sex tourists has been seen as a great success story almost, considering? Yeah, I mean, it's better than it was. But it's basically like a tourist place for Westerners. yeah i mean it's the world's red light district yeah and it needs to exist because you know where is someone like your dad meant to go when his business fails you know deborah i want to know if i like it yeah it's tits and a dick i want to know if i'm into it my dad is in indonesia i don't want to die not knowing yeah so yeah my my family we were part of the lineage of polpot of well what was interesting was i met another comedian and he his dad's not a sex tourist but is a moved out to southeast asia for sex on a tourist visa yeah but i don't want to throw can you get a sex tourist visa is that where you can yeah um it was funny speaking to another comedian about his dad who is in cambodia right and we were talking about our dads and how long they've been out there as if they'd served in the war.

4:40So it was like Cambodia 10 years. It's like, yeah, Indonesia 12. It's a sort of sex tour of duty. Yeah, exactly. But I feel that's a new thing for sons to be talking about. Yes, yeah. Like that's a new phenomenon. So our dads were talking about their dads who had actually served. And then we're talking about our dads serving as sex tourists in Southeast Asia. So it was a funny moment where I was like, this is a very new conversation for us to both be talking with a shorthand. Oh, I do a lot of charity work for Savile. veterans of sex tourism um yeah so french indochina yeah it's it's the long road to barn me or germany korea australia korea australia whatever you want to call it it's the french empire yeah and before that camba cambodia is sort of like a backwater of a back water yes and this is important because what's this charlie this is a um 10 year old boy who weighs 188 kilograms.

5:37Is he Cambodian? Yeah, he's Indonesian. Right. That's nowhere near this, is it? Well, he's in the area. He's in the area. Yeah, I guess it's... He's around the corner. He weighs 188 kilograms and he's 10? Yeah. My word. He is the world's fattest child, apparently. And he's been put on a crash diet because his parents are afraid for his health. Crash diet. Right. 188 kilos, he goes on a crash diet. To be fair, that's one of the most impressive specimens you've brought up, to be fair. Facially, I did look like him when I was... there's a little bit of the stuff. You feel that it's tenderizing the meat.

6:08Look at that. Yeah. It looks like one of those water beds when he was nine years old. He couldn't walk to school because he would quickly run out of breath. Yeah. No, that's she's acting like this has happened to that. Like surely you had something to do with this. I don't know what happened. He couldn't get to school. Like why is she not fat? Like what is he, where's he sneaking food? Look at that. Look how they wash him. Oh my God. Like he's causing him down. Fuck me. wait is that like a seven man job look at this it's like it's quite albanian's watching your car yeah you can't go to a forecourt and get a bunch of albanians to scrub him down my god anyway right so that's a bit of context we've got a lot of stuff to get through we do have a lot of stuff to get through um he's kind of mesmerizing it is please get off the screen so cambodia uh is surrounded by vietnam and lao yeah um this is prime gap year stuff yes but uh Cambodia in the early modern period was constantly being dicked on by both Vietnam and what's then called Siam, what's now called Thailand.

7:11That's where the first transgender person came from, I believe. Cambodia is sort of like the Poland of Southeast Asia, right? Always getting invaded. Yeah, it's just it's being Eiffel Towered by Vietnam and Thailand. Yes. between the 1500s and the 1800s Cambodia is at various times ruled by Vietnam by Siam apart from a small period when Angkor Wat which is one of the most famous sites so there was a small period where they owned Vietnam and Thailand the height of the Khmer Empire is sort of the 13th century something like that and they own a lot they ran a lot of South East Asia And that's why Angkor Wat, that site is such a big symbol for them.

7:59Not only because it's such an extraordinary site, but because it's a symbol of when they used to run shit. But they've been kind of in the sort of doldrums since then. Yeah. And Vietnam and Thailand, Siam, are running it. At one point, for 200 years, Vietnam blocks off Cambodia's access to the sea. Fair enough. So it sends Cambodia to bed with no supper. Basically. So there's no access to trade. Yeah. So it doesn't really develop at all. Right. Push your limits, train with precision, see the results. At Equinox, that's high performance loving. Everything you need to lock in and unlock your potential at Equinox.

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9:29Then the French get involved. The French call this Indochina. And the French just take over all of this and call it, apart from Thailand, because Thailand was never colonised. No. It's one of the only countries not to be colonised ever. Well, they're doing some interesting stuff down there. They are. You know, they develop differently. This is what happens. It's like Japan. You have Neanderthals, you have Netrandethals. That's Thais. that's where the transgender patient zero is thailand you've seen the 10 gun salute in thailand what is it just 10 blokes getting their car no it's 10 10 10 lady boys firing ping pongs lady boys firing ping pongs out their ass uh i believe you i believe you have to be a cisgender female to get ping pong shows charlie get us a ping pong trans ping pong shows must involve the ass i don't think the lady boys fire ping pongs out of their surely surely you have you have on one side you have women cisgender women on the other side you have lady boys and the women fire the ping pongs out and the lady boys thwack it right with their not so it's like batting practice yeah right is a lady boy um a tie throw down you got uh you're a beautiful woman with a cock yes that's what lady boy is right yes so it's never the it's never a fanny down there i don't think so that would be a lady lady that'd be a lady yeah you need to call the lady okay you know are you a lady lady or a lady boy okay fine and you don't get lady men either lady man it's boy it's boy yeah it's interesting that isn't it yeah can a lady boy become a lady man it's more gentle i guess a lady boy yeah yeah i'm a lady i'm a lady man you don't want a lady man feels less if you were gonna experiment i don't know i think if you're dipping your toe into that sort of stuff where are you putting your toe well it gets fired straight out of that Yeah, you're right.

11:14I guess a ladyboy is for people like your dad. It's a stepping stone to opening their sexuality. Yeah, exactly. And I think ladyman, it's just... Hey, I'm a ladyman. Come on then, mate. Come on then, mate. You want to have a look at this? Have a bang on this. You want to see something fucking mental? See these tits? Well, check this out. You're saying it's Ronnie Biggs. He's a ladyman. All right, look at this. Whoa, I had a whopper down there. have a butchers at this so that's what's going on in Thailand they're developing their own story but that's not Cambodia that's not what we're talking about today no now in 1863 Cambodia becomes a French protectorate and I think the word protectorate is quite important because the French are meant to be protecting them but this becomes crucial later so like Wales that's a protectorate right oh sorry the country I thought you meant the animal the country of Wales is it?

12:08oh no it's principality It's not a protector. It's a country, I think. It's not a country, technically. Wales? I don't think so. It's definitely a country. Is Wales a country? Yes. It's 100 % a country. We're going to have some angry Welsh in the comments. Okay. Yes, it's a country, though it's part of the United Kingdom. Do you think it was a county? I think it was a big county. Fuck me. No, no, there was England and Wales. It doesn't have the same rights as Scotland or Ireland. I'm as shocked by that as you reacting to me going, dong, dong, dong. Saying Wales isn't a country. Genuinely believing it as well.

12:36No, it's not that Wales isn't a country. What is it? Wales, they don't have... No, yeah, yeah. There's something different about them. Well, yeah. Yeah. Doesn't mean they're not a country. Get Sandra's videos on. Yeah, I mean, they're obviously built differently. What are they drinking it? What are they drinking it? But yeah, they're built differently. It doesn't mean they're not a country. No, they're still a country, though. Christ. Can't take that away from them. No. Now, Cambodian royalty. I suppose the country... We've read this book on Pol Pot, which, as you were saying to me, is written...

13:04It wouldn't be written like that nowadays. No, it was an old school one. it's hard to find yeah and i feel the copies i've got are like used it's not like something that was easy to get on amazon no um and but i found it quite funny because at all times old school the author's going you've got to bear in mind the cambodian people are really thick yeah stuff that you were he really went for like big swings there yeah every history now is so many caveats yeah every nothing is anyone's fault everything is like built within this huge system the americans were involved they did it yeah yeah and he's like no they're really thick and stupid and they believe some really stupid shit this was gonna happen because i mean they're a basket case yeah that's basically what he says um but the point is that the cambodians is a is a very very very like feudal yeah in terms of the um uh progression of societies it's way way way way way way back i mean it's in the middle of the jungle away from the sea so they're just it's really hard to get anything in there.

14:03So it's really like pretty medieval. But the French come in and they, and my point is that the Cambodian royalty, they think the king is a god. They have god kings and they're Buddhist-ish. Which goes all the way back to Angkor Wat. Yeah, British. They're British. British. And you have these two lines, it's Noradom and Sissawath, not really that important, but basically at some point there's a guy called King Mongivong. Mongivong? What's he called? King Mong. Not King Mong. Monivong. Sisawat Monivong. Monivong. Monivong. He rules 1927 to 1941. So this is under the French protection. The French come in, they go, it's India, it's China, it's Indochina.

14:49And they basically make all that area one thing. And like most French colonies, there's French quarters to the cities where it looks like a little Paris and the Caboans are basically servants. They build up Phnom Penh, which is the kind of the main city, the capital. They do a lot of colonial architecture. They make a big French quarter. But they have a policy where they're like, we're going to deliberately hinder their development because we're only going to add a few French schools. Why purposely? Because they're like, there's some name they give it. They want to make it like an assimilated colony, which means that they're like, we're only going to build three schools.

15:33We're not like building loads of schools. We're building three schools. They'll be French. And you've got to be clever to get in. And was that the same in Vietnam? Was that across the whole of French Indochina? No, because Vietnam was way more advanced. Loads of ports. Yeah. So for context, in like 1936, the first Cambodian language newspaper begins. Right. By that point, Vietnam had 3 ,000. Vietnamese language, newspapers. Right, right, right. So literacy and stuff, it's, you know, it's the jungle basically. Yeah. So yeah, 1892, the French parliament declares Indochina an assimilated colony. Jungle is massive.

16:07Jungle is massive. And so this is basically a policy to consolidate the dominance of French culture in Cambodia. So French is the official language, only open a few schools. They hire French teachers to teach in French and they offer French history courses instead of Cambodian ones. so then monivong so there's people in the middle of the jungle learning about like the eiffel tower yeah and they don't know what's going on yeah because they're basically it's just rice their life is rice right yeah their uncle roger hiya you know that's yeah that's cambodia right it's a lot of people sitting like this if we were a cambodian podcast we'd be doing it like this we're waiting for a goat a goat that will never come waiting for Goto Cambodian play it's just this my dad's been to Cambo did loads not as a sex tourist he makes films out there but he said he makes films out there not sex films have you gone out there with him no you're right have you seen any of the footage he took kids out there oh did he yeah it's brilliant fuck me if this is a Cambodian podcast he'd be sitting like this right under a tree yeah waiting for a goat to come but it never comes it never comes it's just a guy who comes and fucking fucking throws you against the tree yeah that's basically what it is yeah so anyway there's a guy called Sisawat Monivong who's the king and at this point in Vietnam Ho Chi Minh's Indo-Chinese Communist Party is so Ho Chi Minh he's he becomes obviously a big cheese yeah in Vietnam Vietnam what I didn't realise before we started this was how intertwined the Vietnam War is with Pol Pot and the Command Roof.

17:53Yes, I know. It's kind of the same thing. It's part of the same, it's one of the side effects of the shocks and trauma of the Vietnam War. So obviously we'll, you know, So it adds even more to the big whoopsies. It's a, yeah, yeah, it is a real big whoopsie. And Nixon's getting involved later on in the story. It's a giant, this whole region is a giant banana peel, to be honest. Yeah, it really is. And to be fair, It looks like one in a way. It does, yeah. And to be fair, could you say that Southeast Asia sort of basically post-war, it's essentially 50 years of war from like World War II onwards.

18:26It just never stops until like the 90s. Until my dad starts coming there and saying, what's going on down here? What's going on here? And your dad's going like, yeah, yeah, yeah, the fucking... What have you got in your pants? Yeah. Can I have a look at that? Yeah, your dad's like, oh yeah, the genocide anyway. What's going on down there? Tip-tanner dick. Yeah, tell me something about the killing fields. What's your name, sir? Or lady. Is it Lady Boy or Lady Man? what is the what is the population of Thailand that is trans do they even would we even would they even call themselves trans I don't know what to be like not in a gay way what are you talking about I'm not gay I've got tits on a dick I'm a lady boy they beat up trans people the lady boys we're not fucking queer I'm fucking trans I'm a lady boy like what is because obviously Thailand is so 311 ,000 transgender women in Thailand yeah which is more than the population of Swindon Wow.

19:19What? Imagine that. Trans-Swindon. Which country is the highest percentage of trans people? I guess trans people are the magic roundabout, aren't they? Don't know which way I'm going. Apparently, Germany and Sweden. Really? Germany's surprising. Germany? Well, I get Berlin, I suppose. It's something about Protestantism. They snap back. Your own lived experience, your own relationship to God. Your own relationship to genitalia? Yeah. yeah I guess so I suppose you're right are you saying the reformation is the first step on the way to transgender I'm not even saying that as a joke I genuinely believe that I think there will be far more transgenders people far more transgenders there will be far more transgenders in Protestant countries than Catholic countries really because Catholic is more rigid and traditional I've got a fanny what do you no no no you showed us your dick yesterday I was making a point and you just said I've got a fanny No, if you have a fanny, you're like, I've got a fanny.

20:19If you're in a Protestant country. Why? Because you know you have a fanny. He's adding to your point. I'm trying to support your point. I don't think you are. I don't think that helps my point at all. I've got a fanny. If you're in a Protestant country, you just say, I've got a fanny. But if you're not, obviously, you wouldn't say, I've got a fanny. It didn't help, but he is trying. He's trying to. I've got a fanny. Yeah.

20:38But Protestantism is about curating your own relationship with God. Yes. No, I see your point. but I would say that I know in India and in Indochina like they don't even see I don't think they see gender neutrality as like a different concept I don't see Fanny it is it's I don't see Fanny and we need to talk about I mean they don't actually because there's a lot of dicks down there when we do the history of transgender people yeah Iran has a fascinating because they have the most the best surgeries are in Iran Iran but and we talked about this remember we did actually yeah we did and we were like oh that's so woke of Iran but we realised the reason was is because you get killed for being gay they're like instead we'll just turn you into a woman.

21:13Yeah. With, with hairy countries, you can kind of hide. Hairy? Sorry. If you're a hairy country, you can hide behind your pubes more. Like if you're like a. Don't hide behind your pubes, sir. Come out from behind there. If you're like, you know, like that Ned Flanders meme where you're sort of going back into the bush. Well, that's a dick going back into the pubes. I'm a Simpson going back into the pubes like that. I'm not, I'm trans now. Yeah. But Southeast Asian are hairless people. So. Right. So anyway, we don't know but my point is i think there's a because you know there are tribes that have like a thousand genders and so that's yeah and so the loony left no not the loony level yeah the loony left but i mean like there's tribes in other parts of the world where gender neutrality and non-binary stuff isn't isn't a category it's just kind of accepted because they're you know they're communing with spirits and stuff sort of i think people throw that around a lot but i'd love to see well it's my point i think basically because what always makes me laugh is they'll be like yeah we have such like a rigid view of gender and then they'll pick up what like five a tribe of five people where that didn't apply see yeah it's like well then they're also cannibals and you go right well should we be doing that should we do that should we are we throwing that baby out with a bathwater anyway so monivon is a king and the french want to use him as sort of a puppet basically that's the that's the french vibe now during world war ii uh france forced to germany in weeks because they are you know, their fucking defense is a kitchen.

22:45Spring under their arms. Yeah, they've got springs under their arms. And so what does this mean for their empire? It means that they are run by Vichy France. Naughty France. Naughty France. The peak of France, in my opinion. Which is a government that collaborates with Nazi policies. And so what does this mean for their... And ideologies. And ideologies. Yeah, naughty France. So, Monivon is kind of helpless then to stop the japanese who are in their naughtiest of the naughty days yeah no one's ever really been naughty yeah yeah apart from maybe the khmer rouge yeah which is which khmer rouge is all jungle nazis that's exciting um yeah sort of they are i mean i mean they're barely communist they don't know what they're fucking are they don't know that's what's so funny about it yeah they say they're they don't fucking know what communism is it's crazy yeah i guess so we'll get to it but the nazis it's like nazis are like is one race dominating another in some ways but khmer rouge they're like it's just anyone anyone's going to be killed pretty much yes there's no rival reason it's shuffle it's shuffle genocide you you next you yeah get rid of them anyway the japanese come in who are allied to germany of course they occupy cambodia from 1941 to 45 right and this uh kind of shatters the illusion that the french are protecting them yes because they can't protect them from the japanese um because the french are very weak at this point french are very weak uh When have they not been?

24:07Monivong dies shortly after the Japanese occupation. And so France go, we need to find a king that's going to, we can control, a little puppet king. And they appoint a 19-year-old Noradom Sianuk. He's a little twink. And he's Monivong's grandson, I believe. And so they think he's 19. We can, you know, he's pliable. We don't know. But he basically, I would say, arguably is the main character in the Pol Pot story. I'd say so. His story is amazing. he's an incredible character he's in a story where everyone seems to be pretty thick he's one of the only people who seems to be have any semblance I'd say he's probably the most articulate and politically astute like third world leader of this period yeah I can't I think that's fair because he's like a poet as well maybe like Kwame Nkrumah or Jomo Kenyatta in Africa but yeah he's incredible the triangulation he ends up playing between the US China Russia and Vietnam is like would make would make Blair weep it's true it's crazy good I mean there's a bit of synonym revisionism though is there I mean he did sort of fuck it oh no no he totally fucks it a bit like Blair Blair fucks it right okay but I'm just saying as a kind of you know my the reason I love Blair is more as a kind of Greek tragic figure I'm obsessed with the story of the man yeah and his muscles and his wife yeah okay so it's Jungle Blair he's got everything it's jungle yeah it's jungle player yeah um so there's hubris involved the whole thing yeah i mean he's a he's a so anyway he's a phenomenal politician now he his quote right his first quote he says is cambodians are all naughty boys and that includes me so he's uh he breaks down in tears when he gets first selected to he doesn't want it because he's 19 he's terrified um uh but so he'd had a lonely childhood his mother gives him to a carer for the first six years of his life his dad's a womanizer he gets sent to france and gets sort of fully french and all the intellectual class and this includes in vietnam as well ho chi minh and later polpo they everyone gets educated in france so that's what But it's tight.

26:26Intellectual, even the intellectual class in Southeast Asia wouldn't probably be counted as like a sort of, you know, GCSE level. Do you know what I mean? It's so much. What we were saying, and this is going to come throughout this story, is a bachelor's degree has never gone further than in Southeast Asia. Yeah. Because it's like 15 people got picked to go to France to get a degree. Yeah. And they go back and end up leading a genocide that kills... Two million people. 20 % of the population. Yeah. But I wouldn't even say that they finished their degree. No. Or they understood it. Yeah. I mean, the levels of like...

27:03They did an Erasmus course. Yeah. I get the gist. Yeah. Let's go home and do it. So, Si 'Anouk, kind of, he starts to become more confident into the role. In the 40s and 50s, he had six wives, fathers, 14 children, while he's in office. Again, Jungle Blair. when he comes to the throne in 41 it says his interests are football jazz riding movies and girls he's a man after my own heart that's pretty good riding yeah riding separate to riding girls yeah he's a keen sax player so it's kind of clinton almost right clinton yeah and a film watcher and film bro he is a film bro he makes during his life he produces directs and writes 50 films are these actually filmed yeah yeah but they're all they're all romantic dramas and he no educational background.

27:51So he's got that sort of private school entitlement, right? Yeah. Yeah, I can do that. Can we get any footage of his films? We can find any footage of Xenox films. One's called Twilight. And he would also star in the lead role. And he'd do the music. Yeah. But I mean, as soon as the country fell apart, part of me is thinking... Write the theme tune, do the theme tune. But also, shouldn't you be leading the country? Oh, here we go. I feel like you had a lot more to do. The whole thing's on YouTube. Right. Yeah, look at that. Sepia. It's in Sepia. I don't know. Yeah. Well, he put the Instagram filter, Sepia on.

28:21Yeah. They put Paris filter on this. Yeah. This is one of C-Nook's films. This is Twilight. When's he making this? Well, that's my, so this is a bit later on. You should be running the, but he, he is genuinely distracted by, this is, I think, I think. 1969 is when shit's really kicking off. Yeah. There's a civil war going on. You probably should not be doing this, lad. He's making a film that he's starring in. And doing the music. Yeah. You need to learn to outsource. Yes, he does. It's a really important job as delegation. yeah but uh he's doing his own clips yeah he's doing his own clips subtitling it's like lad learn to delegate delegate so but he he sees it as a chance to like show cambodia's beauty to the world right it's kind of like a pr thing fine fine visit cambodia so he siinuk revokes these treaties that have been signed in 63 and 64 which have um had been like unequal treaties with the french and he when the when the french are defeated when the sorry when the nazis are defeated he seizes the opportunity to just proclaim independence in 45 um but this is not recognized internationally everyone's like nah and so he appoints uh this guy son gok tan yep yeah pretty good uh as prime minister he's a sort of nationalist right he had previously organized anti-french protests he's the one who starts the khamer language newspaper so it's a bit of a power vacuum's now formed basically with who actually runs yeah Cambodia but then the French eventually so obviously the French have just been but they didn't even really beat the Nazis they just you know they got rid of them uh then the French come back and put him under um they arrest him and exiled and put him onto house arrest but they've got a little bit less they've got far less power now when the French come back because now it's a bit more like well you fucking left us you that's my point about the protectorate is you fucked it right so but then this is what's quite interesting is that the french you know you we talked to obviously in the post-war british series about uh this is a sort of series of declines and we just let it go the french fucking really try and hang on to it yeah because they get they come back after world war ii and they're like right let's fucking let's get it back it's clearly a part of their lost kind of virality from world war ii they really wanted to hold on to these because they're very similar in vietnam yes well they hold on to it very tight in the 50s so this starts in a way that britain doesn't really no so this starts the first indochinese war the second one is known as the vietnam war india versus china no that's not they're not even coming they're not into it it is like calling world war ii the brazil hawaii war like it's just irrelevant it is but yeah uh the first indochinese war is the france basically trying to get back uh their colonies of vietnam and Cambodia and maybe this is very important especially for the Vietnam story as well this is the origin of the beginning because Ho Chi Minh who is the original jungle communist leader of North Vietnam he's jungle Corbyn I guess jungle Corbyn Ho Chi Minh but then I guess Corbyn's actually concrete Ho Chi Minh isn't he because he's going off the back of Ho Chi Minh so I don't know what he would be called council house so he's jungle lenin ho chi min's jungle lenin and then yeah corbin is corbin's inner city yeah inner city starlin i guess i don't know foggy overcast yeah anyway so jungle lenin bean's ho chi min yeah so jungle lenin ho chi min sorry allotment ho chi min yes yeah there we go got it we got it we got there um so uh he starts he he forms the viet min which is the communist um northern vietnam thing uh and there's also and then in cambodia i see this it all gets very complicated now it's kind of a three-way fight yeah in that you have the northern vietnamese who are fighting the french to try and get control of vietnam yeah but they also want cambodia to be absorbed into vietnam yeah and at all points throughout this story the vietnamese are the chinese are funding it because mao's about and at all times in the story the vietnamese are kind of like patronizing the cambodians and not letting them there's a lot of ethnic tensions yes which is confusing yeah because they seem to be the same ethnicity but again this is you know the the the myth that it's only white people that are racist is really exposed to it's britain and ireland right I guess so.

32:55They'd look at us saying we look the same. No, they've got bigger heads. I know, but you could spot that. Yes, I'm an expert. I'm an amateur technologist. But I imagine, Charlie, can you Google who has the bigger heads, Vietnamese or Cambodian people? Yeah, there must be some sort of database. There must be. There is no data to suggest that people in Vietnam or Cambodia have larger heads than the other. Well, you know what kind of projects we need the patron to fund? Yep. We need to get on a plane with some calipers, stat. Your dad went out to make documentaries in Cambodia. I'm going over to measure some heads.

33:29So the Cambodians have this thing called the Khmer Isarak, who are kind of, they're nationalists, sort of. They're not really communists. It's not like as distinct left, right. There's so much going on. And also anti-colonial, anti-imperialist kind of all blends into it as well. Because there's nationalists who can be anti-imperialist as well as communists. There's no sense yet. they don't know what communism is there's no left or right no it's basically it's it's get the french out of here but this is what's funny about the book the guy says that cambodia doesn't have the judeo-christian sense of good versus evil it has jungle versus town yeah yeah and it's forest versus village yeah that's the binary they're like the it's so far removed from our yeah understanding of you know our tree of knowledge yeah there's their it's an actual tree it's a palm tree that they're sitting under with their legs up waiting for a go and it's not good versus evil it's tree versus village it's tree versus village and if you're in the village you're bad i think if you're in the town you're bad right basically it's such an individualistic family like that there's no real community outside the family yeah and if if there is they think it's bad right because they think it's bourgeois sort of i don't but then it's like spirits and evil yeah it's just voodoo right it's voodoo tree stuff catholicism voodoo so it is voodoo there's incense the smells it's black magic catholicism is black magic look what the look what the vatican do you know anyway so the french side of the first inter-chinese war you have the state of vietnam which look at the state of vietnam look at the state of vietnam um u.s and france have recognized a government of vietnam but that's in what would now then be the South Vietnam.

35:18Is that Diem? Oh, fuck it. South Vietnam, the US propped up. Yeah. Yeah. And then you have the kingdom of Lao and you have the kingdom of Cambod. Lao. Ignore Lao. I don't know what the fuck's going on. Ignore Lao. Ignore it. Yeah, what's Lao most famous for? What have I got to hang on to in Lao? Tree houses. There's a lot of tree houses. I think so. Yeah, natural landscapes. I don't know if that's enough. Yeah. What's there to do in Lao? No, what's Lao famous for? What's Laos famous for? Most famous Laotian. Landscapes. Yeah. And Buddhism. What's the most famous Laotian ever done? Land of a million elephants.

35:54Okay. Elephants. Anyway, you have the cambo. We won't be doing an episode on it. We will never do an episode. We normally say. No. We'll be covering that boy shot. This is the most we'll ever talk about Laos. So you have this. Malve it alone. Go on. Yeah. Come on. Forward. Right. Push your limits. Train with precision. See the results. At Equinox, that's high performance loving. Iconic spaces that inspire. Personal training backed by real data. Unlimited group fitness classes from yoga and Pilates to strength and conditioning. Elevate your post-performance ritual with saunas, steam rooms, cold plunges, and more.

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